Storms on Uranus take Scientists by Surprise

November 14, 2014 11:47 AM

14
0

A slew of squalls have been spotted by astronomers on Uranus. With the help of the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, team lead Imke de Pater, a planetary astronomer at UC Berkeley, and colleagues first spotted the strange activity in August. The observatory has been used regularly for more than a decade to study weather patterns on Uranus.

The researchers were really surprised by eight large storms they saw at the planet, including the brightest tempest ever seen on the planet at 2.2 microns. "It was just by chance I was observing and noticed these incredible storms that we really had never seen before. You always have to be looking, ...